Les Bonnes Choses

This post is more of a public awareness thing than anything else, and mostly relevant only to a small but important cross-section of the people who might read this blog -- namely the people who like to run computer programs that come with that irritating dongle copy protection scheme (cough - E-Prime - ahem).

According to this article I just read, it is now legal to circumvent this technology if, say, you're flashing your dongle around in public and someone gets alarmed, and kicks your dongle, rendering it impotent. The article says that congress now

[Allows] computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

Of course, "cannot" might be the key phrase here, and can be interpreted in many ways. For example, I cannot go on an Alaskan cruise. Not because the salty sea air will kill me, but because I haven't got any disposable income to speak of.



So there you go. I don't know if this is good news for more than a handful of people I know, but if I've made anyone's day, I've done my job.

Update: This shady site that is under constructions [sic] lists quite a few computer programs that use dongles that they support, should you be kicked in the dongle. Though iTunes doesn't show up in a quick survey of the software listed, which suggests that I won't have won over any more of the kool kids with this uber-dorky post, it was nonetheless fun to use the word dongle in a sentence.